Knight-Ridder Inc. reported on Tuesday that second-quarter profits fell 6.8 percent, chiefly because ad revenue stayed soft at the company`s major newspapers. Earnings were $41.5 million, or 82 cents a share, compared with $44.6 million, or 88 cents a share. Revenue fell to $569 million from $592 million in the same quarter a year ago. "Overall, business remained weak," said Robert Singleton, chief financial officer at Knight-Ridder. "All of our major markets, including Philadelphia, Miami, Detroit and San Jose, continued to struggle with problems in the economy."

The Miramar Cultural Trust has a mission to make the arts more accessible, and it's getting some help from a Knight Arts Challenge Miami grant. The trust is one of 49 winners recently announced during the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation's arts challenge. The challenge, which started in Miami, has expanded to Philadelphia and, most recently, Detroit. The challenge is slowly being expanded to cities that feature a newspaper owned by the Knight brothers, said Dennis Scholl, the foundation's vice president of arts.

Knight-Ridder had a terrible year, but it expects earnings to rebound when the economy picks up, executives of the Miami-based media company told shareholders on Tuesday. At the annual meeting, chairman and chief executive James K. Batten offered no timetable for improvement. He said advertisers would return to the chain`s 28 daily papers as shoppers returned to malls and supermarkets. "We don`t know when that happy event is going to take place," Batten said. In the first quarter of 1991, earnings fell nearly 39 percent to $15.8 million from $25.8 million a year ago. "Knight-Ridder is plowing ahead on a steady course despite these heavy seas," Batten said.

There's a simple principle underlying Buying the War, said television journalist Bill Moyers: Be skeptical. "People should read and watch the news with a raised eyebrow," said Moyers, a writer, executive editor and narrator of the 90-minute documentary about U.S. media coverage of claims and information leading to the invasion of Iraq in March 2003. The "phenomenon of terrorism" and the events of Sept. 11, 2001, shaped press coverage, he said. The film notes: "As the administration organized to strike back at the terrorists, there was little tolerance for critical scrutiny from journalists."

Knight-Ridder Inc. said on Thursday that it will delay plans to merge its financially troubled Detroit Free Press with the Gannett Co.`s Detroit News until the U.S. Supreme Court rules on a challenge to the merger. That could mean that the two major daily Detroit papers will not merge until the spring of 1990, when the high court is expected to rule on the scope of the 1970 Newspaper Preservation Act. Until the Supreme Court announced that it would take up the issue, the papers were scheduled to merge on May 8. Knight-Ridder, which also owns The Miami Herald, said it still has no plans to scrap the merger.

MIAMI -- Knight-Ridder Inc. Chairman Alvah Chapman told the company`s annual meeting Tuesday that new advertising sales taxes in Florida and continued problems with the Detroit Free Press are undermining the value of Knight- Ridder`s stock. He said big investors were disappointed by U.S. Attorney General Edwin Meese`s decision to hold an Aug. 3 hearing on the company`s request to merge the business functions of the Free Press with the rival Detroit News. The Free Press, Knight-Ridder`s third largest, lost $17 million last year, according to the company`s annual report.

Knight Ridder's surprise decision to move its corporate headquarters to California's Silicon Valley is a stinging blow to Miami, but not a serious one in economic terms. Its largest negative impact could be on charitable giving in Miami-Dade County, and certainly the symbolism of a Fortune 500 company leaving South Florida must be recognized. The 148 jobs to be lost in Knight Ridder's relocation obviously aren't helpful to the Miami economy, but they pale next to the loss of such giants as Eastern Airlines, Pan American World Airways, Southeast Bank and CenTrust.

Miami-based Knight-Ridder expects a profit from its Detroit newspaper no later than the fourth quarter, Chairman P. Anthony Ridder told shareholders on Tuesday. Knight-Ridder, parent company of The Miami Herald, has been losing money in Detroit since last July because of a strike by six unions, which walked out in a dispute over staffing levels. Ridder said ad revenues are 75 percent of the level they were in the first quarter of 1995, which is slightly ahead of Knight-Ridder's target of 72 percent.

Knight-Ridder Inc. has bought a 50 percent interest in Destination Florida, the Orlando-based on-line service owned by Tribune Co., parent company of the Sun-Sentinel. Under terms of the deal, the companies will form a new company, Destination Florida LLC. A six-member board of directors, with three members from Knight-Ridder and three from Tribune, will oversee the company. Knight-Ridder is the publisher of The Miami Herald. Tribune Co., with headquarters in Chicago, also publishes The Orlando Sentinel.

Knight-Ridder said on Friday that James K. Batten will be named chairman of the Miami-based media company at the Sept. 20 board of directors meeting, succeeding Alvah H. Chapman Jr., who will retire. Chapman, 68, has been chairman since 1982. He will continue as chairman of the board`s executive committee and as a consultant after his retirement on Oct. 1, the company said. Batten, 53, is president and chief executive officer. P. Anthony Ridder, who now heads the company`s newspaper division, will assume the additional title of president after Batten becomes chairman.

Every so often, the print media go into panic about the print media. Last week, The Economist magazine yelled "Who Killed the Newspaper?" on its front cover, while The New York Times looked into the sale of Knight Ridder, America's second-largest newspaper chain, treating the story like a bellwether of the newspaper industry. I remember sitting round a table in my capacity as op-ed page editor for one of the Knight Ridder papers in the early 1990s, listening to Tony Ridder, the chief executive, explain that technology was rendering newspapers as we knew them obsolete.

By Katharine Q. Seelye and Andrew Ross Sorkin The New York Times, March 13, 2006

Knight Ridder, the nation's second-largest newspaper company and parent company of The Miami Herald, agreed Sunday night to sell itself for about $4.5 billion in cash and stock to the McClatchy Co., a publisher half its size, according to people involved in the negotiations. The deal, which is expected to be announced today, comes as the newspaper industry is gripped by uncertainty as readers across the country have begun to drift away from printed newspapers. However, the sale could help assuage some investors who are nervous about the values of newspaper companies because Knight Ridder commanded a premium of about 25 percent for its shares from the time it put itself up for sale in November under pressure from shareholders who were unhappy with performance of its stock.

South Florida Sun-Sentinel investigative reporter Sally Kestin and database specialist John Maines have been honored with a National Headliner award for their 2004 series "Marine Mammals: Below the Surface." The five-part series, published in May 2004, revealed that thousands of captive marine mammals had died from causes that included chlorine poisoning, heat exposure, capture shock and stress. It found federal inspectors slow to enforce regulations and impose penalties even after documenting animal deaths because of poor veterinary care, starvation or preventable accidents.

Teachers, college employees and cruise ship workers won overall titles at the 20th South Florida Mercedes-Benz Dealers Miami Corporate Run Thursday night in downtown Miami. After verifying entries and times, Team FootWorks race officials announced the division winners, including overall champions, on Friday. For the second year in a row, Miami-Dade County Public Schools team of Kim Van Demark, Julie Weaver and Cecilia Shelley won the women's team title with a combined time of 1 hour, 4 minutes and 53 seconds.

Knight Ridder said on Tuesday it will move its headquarters from Miami to Northern California next year, in yet another blow to Miami-Dade County's shrinking corporate community. Already this year, insurers John Alden Financial and American Bankers Insurance Group have agreed to merge with out-of-state companies, eliminating their Miami-Dade headquarters. Knight Ridder, parent company of The Miami Herald, said it would move about one-third of its 150 corporate employees to an as-yet-undecided location in Silicon Valley to be closer to the electronic media it sees as the future of the publishing business.

Knight-Ridder Inc. said fourth-quarter earnings fell 42 percent, reflecting increased newsprint costs and the effects of a prolonged strike. Knight-Ridder, whose Detroit Free Press workers have been on strike for six months, said net income declined to $30.9 million, or 63 cents a share, from $53.2 million, or 99 cents, a year ago. The company said earnings were reduced by $17 million, or 20 cents a share, because of severance costs for firing 125...